Women Travelers on the Nile: An Anthology of Travel Writing through the Centuries

Relentlessly entertaining "Michelle Green, The New York Times

Women travelers in Egypt in the nineteenth century saw aspects of the country unseen by their male counterparts, as they spent time both in the harems of Cairo and with the women they met along the Nile.

Some of them, like Sarah Belzoni and Sophia Poole, spoke Arabic. Others wrote engagingly of their experiences as observers of an exotic culture, with special access to some places no man could ever go.

From Eliza Fays description of arriving in Egypt in 1779 to Rosemary Mahoney's daring trip down the Nile in a rowboat in 2006, this lively collection of writing by women travelers includes Lady Evelyn Cobbold, Isabella Bird, Norma Lorimer, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, Amelia Edwards, and Lucie Duff Gordon.